The subjunctive

Learning Spanish involved getting to grips with the subjunctive. For instance, cuando vas and cuando vayas are two very different animals. Both might well be translated into English as when you go, but the indicative would imply habitual action, whereas the subjunctive would suggest potential consequence, the former followed in English by the present tense, the latter by the future, as in when you go, I'm happy or when you go, I'll be happy.

This understanding of the building blocks of another language then fed back into my view of English. Once I recognised that the it's a syntactic way of expressing what might happen or what might have happened, I also realised that the subjunctive mood is an integral part of any poem in any language, whether it's invoked explicitly or not. And thus my view of poetry also shifted. The counterpoint of bilingualism is always enlightening.

Poetry London submissions

It's interesting to note that Poetry London have closed to submissions for a period. According to the editor, Niall Campbell, there'll be more info when we decide how best to proceed. 

Poetry London, of course, use Submittable, and have been inundated with poems over the last few months, in an experience that's shared by many major journals. The current dynamic feels unsustainable, that's for sure, if we don't want to burn out our editors and embitter our poets.

The Madrid Review

The Madrid Review is a top-notch addition to the European literary scene, both online and in print (see their website via this link). I'm delighted to have three poems and a prose piece in their forthcoming issue, which is packed with big hitters. Here's a sneak preview of the cover...

Where do we go from here?

Rather than going for a provocative hot take, I’ve waited ten days since returning from the U.K. before posting my reflections on the trip. A total of five readings in six days was certainly an intense experience, and it gave me a real feel for the poetry scene right now.

First off, it served as a timely reminder that 99% of U.K. poetry exists beyond social media and isn’t even aware of many trendy self-publicists. This is especially true beyond the big cities and festivals, at readings above pubs or in arts centres in provincial towns, where people attend and buy books through a pure love of the genre. These people, of course, are my readers.

Secondly, I was struck by just how many remarked on their disillusionment with the direction that many major journals, festivals and publishers have taken in recent years. In fact, there’s clearly a sizeable chunk of poetry readers, purchasers and aficionados who feel disengaged with current fashions. And I’m not just invoking embittered white male OAPs here. Event after event, I encountered varied members of my audience coming up to me at the interval or once the reading finished, champing at the bit to discuss the issue, expressing deep frustration. 

As an individual poet, I can plough my own furrow, reaching out to readers via initiatives such as my recent tour. But a wider issue remains. The disconnect between the London-centric Poetry Establishment (in its changing guises) and its customer base beyond a miniscule social media bubble has never been greater, with the impression that the former has turned its back on the latter so long as the funding keeps rolling in.

That’s a dangerous state of affairs for any genre that wishes to achieve anything beyond mere narcissistic self-expression, self-flagellation and self-adulation. Where do we go from here?

Whatever You Do, Just Don't...Miss It!

Whatever You Do, Just Don't...Miss It! My September tour, that is, five readings in the space of six days. It would be great to see you at one of them...!

The Spotifying of poetry

In recent conversations with a friend (Hi Mat!), the Spotifying of poetry came up. By this term, I don’t mean that poetry is necessarily moving to Spotify, though its presence is certainly growing there. Instead, I’m referring to changes that are taking place in how we consume both music and poetry.

The emergence of Spotify seems to have encouraged people to listen to hit after hit, each from a different group or singer. And in a similar way, social media appears to have enabled us to scroll straight from one individual poem to another. Bearing in mind that most of us are listeners as well as readers, has the shift in how we consume music also played an additional role in altering how we approach poetry?

However, there’s still a trenchant percentage of people who prefer albums, for the way tracks bounce off each other, for the layered, more accumulative listening that helps us appreciate artists more. And then we've got the álbum tracks, which we often end up treasuring more than the hit singles themselves.

And along similar lines, single-poet full collections still have a niche. I believe there’s such a thing as a collection poem, for instance, rather than a magazine poem. A collection poem might be slight if offered up on its own, but it complements the bigger poems around it when placed in the context of an ms, establishing dialogues and connections that run through a book and provide the whole with greater depth.

In fact, I have to admit that I’m starting to wince when I see poets and readers stating on social media that a poem is a banger. Banger after banger can get extremely tedious and mind-numbing after a while. As can hit after hit on Spotify…

A poem by Barry Smith

I'm delighted to feature a poem by Barry Smith today, taken from Reeling and Writhing (Vole Books, 2023), his most recent collection, which is something of a retrospective. In fact, it includes work written across half a century, encompassing a range of styles from sonnets and songs to mock heroic satire, spinning off ideas from the Sixties to the Twenties!

The poem's title is ‘Supplicant’. It's technically adroit, accumulating details, layering them deftly, gradually drawing us in. Much of its power lies in its use of reportage, never telling the reader what to think. Instead, it juxtaposes observations and invites us to engage with its religious and societal ramifications, lifting what might first appear a mere anecdote into resonant verse. I hope you enjoy it...! 

Supplicant

As if called to midday prayer he hunches
on all fours, his back turned to the abbey

where angels and pilgrims blithely
ascend heavenwards gripping stone ladders

flanking iron-studded oak doors
while solemn attendants collect entrance fees.

The crouching man kneels in convocation,
vision fully engaged with grey pavement

as a blackly bristling wire-haired terrier
stands guarding his singularly suppliant master,

sole immobility in this crush of busy shoppers
hustling beneath civic Roman colonnade

rising in fluted stonework above.
No-one pauses or seems to witness,

no hasty handful of change clinks by his side,
only the pool of liquid spreads

slowly suppurating the patch
between recusant dog and man.

Barry Smith

(first published in Liminal, a Chichester Stanza Anthology)